


Endless Years Between

by Paradigmparadoxical



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Papa!Rumple, Teenage Baelfire, Teenage Emma Swan, Woobie Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, teenage Neal Cassidy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 12:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18135722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradigmparadoxical/pseuds/Paradigmparadoxical
Summary: Neal jerked away, left him staring at his empty hand.  He wasn’t here out of any desire to reunite with his father.“My girlfriend is going to prison because of you.”Papa swallowed.  “How?”





	Endless Years Between

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by the amazing @killingkueen (killerkueen on Ao3). None of this would be half what it is without her expert coaching.

Most pawnshops Neal had been in carried an eclectic mix of electronics, jewelry, firearms, musical instruments, and tools. The only things that ran on electricity here were the lights and an antique radio.

The radio was silent. The entire place was silent, save for the fading tinkle of the bell over the door behind him. Glass panes set into painted wood shut out the sounds of small-town pedestrian traffic, leaving him standing amidst an almost sleepy quiet, the lights not especially bright, soft after a morning spent driving in the autumn sun.

He was relieved to find no one about, but strangely disappointed; he’d braced himself before setting his hand to the worn doorknob, listened as he turned it and opened the door into the dim interior.

There was a curtain in one corner, covering another doorway. He kept one eye on it as he moved further into the shop, along a line of cases where polished wood, metal, and glass gleamed.

It wasn’t so dim in here as he’d thought, ceiling lights recessed along the perimeter. A colorful Tiffany cast its gentle glow near the register. The radio that had caught his attention was the delicate wood type from the nineteen-thirties, the grain of its gothic arched cathedral frame forming lacy patterns across the carved surface. Its trio of brass dials might have been manufactured yest-

“May I help you?” a familiar voice asked.

It was slightly puzzled, as though the shop didn’t often get visitors. Neal knew that voice, knew it like he knew his own name - his real name, no more forgotten in the endless years between.

He turned slowly, his insides a block of ice. The curtain in the corner fell back into place, the proprietor an elegant figure in a narrow suit, all the confidence he’d possessed as the Dark One bottled into the trappings of this world.

The head of the cane was gold, his hands unblemished by grime. He stood straighter than when he’d walked with the staff, his weight tipped back onto his left side.

His brown gaze held a flicker of surprise when Neal met it; Neal suspected that not many in this town would dare.

His father frowned. _He never forgot a face_. “I don’t believe I know you.”

There was no recognition whatsoever; it hurt in a way he hadn’t expected. Neal could leave, leave and never see this man ever again. He wanted to run.

There was nowhere to run _to_. He’d gotten Emma into this mess, and so-

Names had power, his father had always told him. He gave him his.

“Baelfire.”

Papa swayed back as though he’d taken a blow.

His expression, so closed off moments before, flashed through shock and joy, pain and grief, and oddly enough - fear. He staggered around the counter, fingers smudging its glass surface in an incidental bid for balance.

Rumplestiltskin had no right to be a part of Neal’s life. He’d given that up when he’d let him go.

Neal stopped him, a hand on his chest. Papa looked down, and his face crumpled.

Neal didn’t care. He wasn’t about to let this man hurt him ever again.

“ _Bae_.”

Papa’s hand came up, covered his. Neal jerked away, left him staring at his empty hand. He wasn’t here out of any desire to reunite with his father.

“My girlfriend is going to prison because of you.”

Papa swallowed. “How?”

How. Sick with anger, Neal turned his back, peered aimlessly down into a cabinet full of silver pieces, ordinary things of an ordinary world. He had to get a grip on himself, or he was going to storm out of here and forget all about this fool’s errand.

There was a set of eight steins in a row at the rear of the display, not silver at all but pewter. Each bore a name: Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey....

No way. Where was Snow White, then? Or rather _who_ was she?

One night in a busy shopping district, old movies played on the sheer side of a building, the sound broadcast over AM radio frequencies, tinny through the bug’s speakers. Emma liked cartoons, the cheesier the better, and waggled a half-crushed bag of popcorn at him.

Tradition, she said. It had to be popcorn.

She didn’t know how to whistle. He taught her, their attempts slowed by fits of laughter.

He couldn’t take his eyes from her mouth.

Behind him, his father’s footsteps receded, then came closer.

The last of the set began with ‘Sn-’ but when Neal moved to the side of the case, he could see more of the name.

‘Sneaky.’ Sneaky?

 _Step-thump_.

If Neal had still been a child he could have turned away again, but he wasn’t, and so he looked up from the display.

Papa had his ball. The one he’d made while still human, the one that had rolled in front of the cart on that terrible day.

The ball was cradled to his chest as though it were something precious.

“You were right, Bae.” His fingers curled into it, caught in the stitching. “You were always right. I was a coward, and I never should have let you go.”

“But you did, and now you need to fix the mess you made.”

Papa swallowed. “Anything, please.”

‘Anything’ was dangerous. How many times had Papa told him not to use it that way? And yet here they were.

“August said that I was keeping Emma from her parents, and then he went and ratted her out to the cops.”

He half-expected Papa to ask who August was, but instead-

“Your girlfriend is... Emma?”

Oh no. Just… no. Why did Papa have to know anything about her?

“How do you know her name?” Neal demanded.

Papa didn’t answer for a moment. A small smile curled at the corner of his mouth, wonder lighting up his eyes.

“You love her.”

Neal shoved his hands into his pockets. “What’s it to you?”

He didn’t want Emma anywhere near this man.

“ _Everything_. Ever since you left, every waking moment - I’ve been looking for you, Bae.”

“And now you’ve found me,” Neal snapped.

The door creaked; Papa froze.

“Hide,” he hissed.

Neal didn’t question the command; his father’s fear had him ducking behind the counter before he could think. 

A bell over the door jingled. He heard Papa drawing away from his hiding spot. _Step-thump_.

Did so few people come to this shop that any visitors meant a danger?

A woman’s spiky heels clicked briskly between the cases.

“I need a child, Gold, and I need your help,” she announced.

Gold - that was the name Papa went by here.

“Well I’m flattered, but uninterested.”

Papa had never been so sharp-edged. They’d both changed. Behind the counter, Neal hugged his knees and worried a loose thread in his jeans.

“Not like that.” Was it possible to hear an eyeroll? “I spent all morning talking to adoption agencies. The wait lists were over two years long.”

 _For an infant, perhaps_ , Neal thought. Emma would have jumped at the chance.

The woman was still talking, persuasive but smug, like someone who routinely got what she wanted.

“But you, Gold… you know how to cut through red tape, and if anyone can work the system and find me a baby, it’s you.”

Perhaps his father was more adept in this land than he’d hoped. Maybe he _could_ get Emma out of the mess Neal had landed her in.

“You wish to adopt?”

The woman huffed. “Oh don’t look so surprised.”

She and Papa were bickering, like two people who knew each other well.

“Oh I’m not. I’m sure you’ll make a….” he trailed off. “Well a mother of some sort.”

The woman snarled. “Can you help me?”

Unperturbed, Papa replied, “Of course I can.”

There was a ‘but’ there, and she heard it as well as Neal did.

“But-” there it was “-a word of caution. Ask yourself, is this something you’re ready for?”

Why would Papa care if she was or not?

She didn’t appreciate the question. “It’s something I need,” she snapped.

“Well, that may not be the same thing. I’ll find you a child-”

A heel ground into the hardwood; the woman turned to leave. Words projected to carry halted her.

“-but whether or not that’s _helping_ you, remains to be seen.”

Whatever his relationship with this woman, the next were soft, as if he weren’t addressing her at all.

“When you become a new parent, you must put your child first.” There was a pause, and Neal’s breath caught painfully in his chest. “No matter what.”

There was no reply, only footsteps, and the door slammed.

 _Step-thump_. The grate of the lock, the clatter of plastic on glass.

“Bae?”

Neal hadn’t moved; he thumped the back of the counter in reply, making the contents rattle. Papa followed the sound to his hiding place, found him staring straight ahead.

He slid down the wall to sit with his back to it, his knees drawn up in a peak next to his. Papa never sat on the ground if he could help it; it was too difficult to get up again.

“She has a hole in her heart,” he said.

He looked exactly as Neal remembered him from before the Dark One’s curse, if a bit cleaner. August had claimed that time stood still here, a thought that creeped Neal out to no end.

“Who was she?” he asked.

Papa’s irises were normal sized, their clear brown direct.

“The one who cast the curse. The mayor.”

The left eye was just a little bit bigger than the right, or perhaps more prominent, giving the other a sleepy appearance. At his lowest points, there had been times when Neal would try to draw his papa from memory, but never got it quite right. Now he knew why.

He frowned. “You didn’t cast it?”

Papa shook his head. “The curse required the heart of the thing one loves most. Counterproductive, to say the least.”

Neal didn’t doubt that his father still loved him; it was the way he showed it that horrified him. The Dark One’s curse had taken the best parts of his father and twisted them into something hideous.

“But you created it, didn’t you?”

There was that fear he’d seen, when he’d first told ‘Mr.Gold’ his name. Papa was afraid, and wasn’t bothering to disguise it.

“I would have done anything to find you again.”

“So… you created the curse and orphaned Emma to get to me,” Neal said flatly. Would Papa hold an entire land hostage?

“Emma’s parents are quite alive.”

Anger boiled up, quick and sharp. “So are you.”

Papa’s head reeled back, hit the wall behind him with a _thump_. He didn’t seem to notice the impact, staring at him open-mouthed. He clutched his cane like a child’s security blanket.

Papa had been a good man, once - one who was twin to the monster in front of him. Neal would have to be equally monstrous to remain unaffected by the hurt he’d inflicted on someone who appeared so much like the man he’d loved.

The anger drained as quickly as it had come. He looked away.

There was a long, pulsing silence in which his stomach soured and knotted. He’d thought he’d put all of this behind him, boxed it up like the old invoices in Mr. Keller’s jewelry shop, gathering dust until they could be destroyed for good.

It wasn’t _Papa_ he was afraid of; it was ripping open the covering on that old wound to find it as fresh underneath as the day it had been carved into him.

So long as he didn’t disturb it, it didn’t hurt quite so much. If it were only himself, he would leave it undisturbed forever, but Emma was innocent. 

Papa’s hands were white-knuckled around the cane, his shoulders drawn in. His head was bowed; he wasn’t even looking at him anymore, his hair fallen over his eyes.

For Emma, Neal reached out and touched his hand, unwrapping his cramped fingers from around the cane.

A father should not look at his son with wide, fearful eyes, as though the son would stab him through the heart just by speaking.

Neal didn't speak; he covered Papa’s hand with both of his, felt him cautiously flex the stiff fingers between his palms. Papa’s wary gaze flickered up to his, flinched away, and darted back.

He had missed Papa; it would burn him.

For Emma, he stayed, the cover on that wound dissolving away, and no, it hadn’t healed. As horrifying as the day he’d hid it, no less for the years ignored.

It lay between them. To begin to mend it risked making it worse.

For Emma he would listen.

Words came slowly, whispered.

“I know... I can’t make up for the past, or for the lost time. All I can do is ask you to do what you’ve always done. And that’s to be the bigger man, and forgive me.”

The Dark One Neal had known would never have been able to say those words. Why then did they have the sound of something many times rehearsed?

Was Papa really free of the magic here? What if he were?

“I’m so sorry, Son. I’m _so_ sorry, Bae-”

Neal couldn’t do this. Magic or no, he loved his papa, and this hurt.

His hand squeezing Papa’s stemmed the tumble of words, and Papa stopped breathing. Neal pulled him closer, heard the cane discarded to the hardwood opposite and knelt beside him, careful of the mangled foot which rested against his calf, then gone.

Papa scrambled to throw himself into his arms, huge, gulping sobs wracking his body. Fingers curled into Neal’s shoulders, held on for dear life.

Not for the first time, Neal wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t forced his hand in that clearing. Papa was never good with snap decisions; his first impulse was to dig in his heels and balk.

Even if he regretted it later.

“Can you truly, truly forgive me?”

Could he? He wanted to, but it was one thing to forgive, to sew up that old wound, it was another to allow Papa the opportunity to hurt him again.

Neal had abandoned Emma. How could he look her in the eye and ask the same, having denied that comfort to his father?

He needed to see Papa, as much as it hurt. Neal pulled back, gathered up his shaking hand once more. There was naked fear in his reddened eyes, an aching uncertainty. He’d been weeping, his face tear-stained, his hair sticking to his cheeks.

He was _human_ , and he’d never looked more fragile.

Neal laid his forehead against his, held him, there on the floor behind the cabinets. It was spotless; not a streak of dust marred their clothing, neither Papa’s crisp suit nor Neal’s ratty jeans.

“Yeah, Papa.”

There was doubt there, as if he didn’t believe him, or didn’t think he really could. Papa nodded and drew back, but kept Neal’s hand in one of his.

“Tell me about Emma, please. Tell me what I can do to help.”

Neal frowned. “You didn’t give me an answer. How do you know her name?”

“Her mother told me.”

It was evasive. Neal’s eyes narrowed. Papa might be able to fool anyone else with that, but not his son.

“And her name is significant because….”

Papa’s hand in his twitched. “Because I was the one who told Snow White that her child was key to breaking the curse. If Emma had stayed, she would never be able to break it. She would be as lost as the rest of us.”

“But I woke you up, just now.”

Papa smiled. “There were two names that I made a trigger for my memories: Yours, and Emma’s. Because If there was even the slightest chance that you would find me, I _needed_ to know.”

“That woman who came in - she’s awake.”

“Very much so,” Papa said grimly.

Neal’s legs were going numb. He reached for the cane and passed it to Papa, then climbed to his feet.

Papa stared at his offered hand for a long, awkward moment, as though he didn’t know why it was there. Then he blinked and the moment passed, Neal pulling him to his feet. They both pretended it hadn’t happened.

He did stand straighter with the cane. Perhaps it was the clothing, or the lack of grime, but he held himself differently. Neal liked this new version of him. He’d had enough of seeing Papa afraid.

Papa was examining him as well, and he frowned as though displeased with what he found.

“Did you eat today?”

Oh. That’s what that was about. Neal shuffled his feet. He resented being caught out, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He had twenty thousand dollars hidden under the backseat of the bug. Never mind that it was going to Emma - he had it, from the watches, and he’d really just forgotten this morning, in his determination to get on the road; he’d lost enough time yesterday, and-

“No,” he admitted. “You got something in mind?”

~

Storybrooke was a small town in northern Maine, a location that was hardly home to a dense population, nor a busy hub of tourism. The imposing edifice of the facility they drove past seemed out of place.

Papa was driving a car. Weird.

“Awfully big hospital for a town where nothing changes.”

Papa nodded. “There’s a man in there who’s been in a neck brace for the past seventeen years. I would imagine there’s quite a few patients with various ongoing maladies.”

“That’s horrible. Papa, the mayor wants you to find her a _baby_.”

Papa’s eyes skittered from the road, to him, and back.

“It is hardly the first time I have traded infants,” he said quietly.

“And you kept tabs on every single one of them.”

That got him a startled look. “I never told you that.”

He’d been right, then. The car pulled up to a curb and Papa cut the ignition.

“You just did,” Neal said smugly.

Papa snorted, but his mirth faded quickly. “I told her I would _find_ her a child.”

Semantics, right.

Papa turned to him across the seat and took his hand. “I don’t want to keep secrets from you, Bae. You were always the best part of me, even before the magic.”

They had been so close, once. It made the betrayal hurt that much more.

“I - I’d like you to be that for me again. I have much I need to tell you, and if… if you don’t wish to see me after, I will understand.”

There was a ‘but’ there.

“But-” there it was “-I want… I want you to always know that you can ask anything of me. I am not without resources in this land.”

“You said ‘anything’ was dangerous.”

“The magic cost me everything. It cost me you. _You_ were my price, and in trying to save you - I lost you. That means it was your price as well.”

“But you don’t have magic here. Do you?”

“I do not.”

“You really gave it up.”

He knew that look, even as long as it had been. _Oh no_.

“Papa?”

He knew that fidget, too - the thumb and fingers together. It was Papa’s version of squirming like a small child. Neal caught that hand in his free one, giving him a pointed glare.

Papa sighed, his hand curling tight within Neal’s. “It is not true to say that this is a land without magic, Bae, or the curse would not have been possible. It has no magic _of its own_. Magic can enter, can be carried in an object, or a person.”

Or a shadow.

“Something keeps the curse functioning, then.”

Worry disappeared, replaced by relief.

He’d been afraid, Neal realized - which was silly; he’d asked him to come to this land. He squeezed Papa’s hands and climbed out of the car.

Papa’s house was built in a style similar to many Neal had seen in London’s newer construction, the gabled windows and spindly gingerbread bringing a lump to his throat. Twin pear trees cast thin shadows across the front path, their leafless branches dark silver against the sky.

“Many years before either of us were born, the magic beans were common, and travel between lands more frequent.”

Neal followed him up the steps.

“Those same travellers _must_ have descendants here today. And yes, the very fact that there is a curse in place implies that something holds it and keeps it functioning.” 

Papa sorted through his keys, unlocked the door. “This town has not received a visitor from outside since its arrival,” he said as he shut it behind them.

He looked up at Neal.

“Except you.”

The interior was cluttered and warm, blush rose covering the walls, dark cherry woodwork framing doors and windows.

“Why me?” he asked. “I mean, how could I find this place, if no one else could?”

Papa led the way into the kitchen, flipping on the lights, and set about putting together a meal.

“The town is invisible to anyone not previously touched by magic,” he said, directing Neal to cabinets with drinking glasses, drawers with silverware for the table.

“The travellers?”

“Possibly, if any still live. Their descendants could be capable as well.”

Neal frowned. “How does the mayor expect to adopt a baby from outside, then?”

A wide frying pan rattled into place on the stove.

“As the caster of the curse, she alone is able to leave this town.”

“You can’t leave?” Yesterday, he never would have expected the horror that filled him at the idea.

Papa shook his head, a box of eggs from the fridge in his hand. “Not until the curse is broken. I did not expect to be woken so soon.”

Real eggs. Eggs were often packaged as liquid in cartons here, the same way the milk was. They did something to them, maybe to make them keep on the shelf longer. It wasn’t the same.

“So if others can’t find the town, then how would the mayor raise a baby here?” he asked. “Say the baby grew up and wandered over the town line. They wouldn’t be able to come back, would they?”

Papa dug in a cupboard and came up with a loaf of bread, then milk and butter from the fridge.

“I would suspect that in order to withhold knowledge of the curse, only the names of infants - or their mothers, rather - who are able to find the town would appear in my correspondence.”

“The curse’s influence would have to reach further than the town for that,” Neal pointed out. “That’s a heck of a scope.”

“It is, that.”

Papa set a few eggs out on the counter behind the bread. “I’ve never made this before,” he said. “I remember doing it, but I don’t think it really happened. I’ve been living on frozen dinners and coffee the last seventeen years.”

He picked up an egg, tapping it on the side of a bowl.

Neal laughed. “Do you know the last time I’ve had food that didn’t come from a can or a take-out place? Emma will love you.”

Papa’s hand slipped, his thumb going straight through the shell. He didn’t seem to notice the mess, staring at Neal.

Neal replayed those words in his head. “If she even wants to talk to me,” he amended.

Papa looked down and grimaced at the egg dripping from his hand. He slid the bowl down the counter toward the sink.

“Emma isn’t supposed to come here until her twenty-eighth birthday,” he said, rinsing under the faucet.

Neal’s heart sank.

Papa left the bowl there and got another from the cupboard.

“Bae, it’s not that.…” The empty shells went in the trash. “I don’t know if she _can_.”

“Why?” he asked. August had told him some, but he knew there was more to it. August had left out quite a few important details, he suspected.

“Some time after I lost you, I... encountered a seer who was most eager to be rid of her _gift_. Would you hand me a fork, please?”

Which drawer? Right, this one.

“Gift?”

“It’s not what one would expect,” Papa said, beating the eggs. “Seeing the inevitable can be a terrible price. The future is like a puzzle, with missing pieces. It is difficult to read, and never-”

He added milk in a thin stream to the bowl.

“-never what you think.”

“So you took it from her?”

The bread loaf was cut into thick slices and dipped into the egg mixture, then piled into a sodden heap in another bowl.

“I don’t know if she knew that the transfer would kill her.”

Neal winced. “That bad, huh?”

“I can control it a little better now.” He unwrapped a stick of butter, his brow furrowing at the fussy packaging. “Well… I could, but it doesn’t work at all without magic.”

“So you what, saw that Emma would come here on her twenty-eighth?”

“Yes.” There was a clicking, and blue flame leapt to life beneath the pan. Papa watched it curiously, as if he’d never seen it happen before. Had he?

Speculatively, “If Emma returns on her twenty-eighth, does that have to mean for the first time?”

Butter sizzled, spat; Papa turned the knob to lower the heat.

“What if it were literal?” Neal asked. “What if she goes away for five minutes and then comes back?”

Papa swallowed. “It’s possible.” He frowned at the pan, propped his hip against the counter and scooped wet bread over the browning butter.

It looked absolutely disgusting; it smelled incredible. Neal took plates from the cupboard, set them by the stove.

“So she _could_ come here.”

A spatula twisted in Papa’s hands.

“It’s dangerous, Bae. Until the curse is broken, the queen holds great power in this town.” Painfully, ” _You_ should not be here.”

It would destroy Papa if Neal were to leave him again. There had to be a way.

An hour ago Neal had wanted to keep Emma as far from here as possible. An hour ago Neal had been an orphan. An hour ago he had been utterly alone.

“What if... Emma were to break a different curse?” he asked. “You know, at twenty-eight.”

Papa’s face scrunched up. “I have no magic.”

“ _You_ don’t. Prophecy fulfills itself, right?”

The scrunching turned to a grimace. “Like it or not.”

 _Splat_. Golden bread sizzled again. _Splat, splat, splat_. Papa had clearly not forgotten how much teenagers ate. Neal hoped he would grow out of this stage soon. That much food was expensive.

He opened the fridge. “Do you have syrup?”

~

The syrup was thick and rich, potent and sweet. Neal passed it across the kitchen table, watched Papa dump an obscene amount onto his plate.

“Geez, that’s nearly alcoholic.”

Papa’s smile bloomed, laugh-lines creasing at the corners of his eyes. Neal thought he was growing out of his sweet tooth; Papa never had.

“You can’t put yourself into a diabetic coma here, can you?” It was a phrase he’d learned from Emma. Papa and he had never had the coin to indulge in sweets to the point of sickness.

“I have no idea.”

It was nice to be able to worry about something so inconsequential as a stomachache.

Neal was hungrier than he’d thought. His mouth full, he drew patterns in his syrup. It was good. He hadn’t been in someone’s home like this since the Darlings. There had been that one foster, when he’d first got back, but it wasn’t the same.

“Will you stay with me?” Papa asked, as they cleaned up the last of the dishes. “For tonight, if naught else.”

Neal wiped down the counter, the bits of egg that lay in sticky circles by the stove. He wanted to, but-

“I haven’t been a child for a long time, Papa.”

The frying pan made a soft _click_ as it settled into its hook on the wall.

“You grew up too soon.”

Neal rinsed the rag in the sink, wrung it, and draped it over the edge. Perhaps it was better that Papa not know.

He’d gone too quiet.

 _Step-thump_.

“How long?”

He closed his eyes, shut out the memories. It didn’t work.

“I knew you’d be alive when I found you, but I never knew how it would be possible. You are not fourteen.”

Neal had to look down to see Papa. He’d never thought of him as short before. He couldn’t answer around the lump in his throat.

“What happened?” Papa’s voice cracked. “You’re older.”

He nodded. Nodding was easy. “I’m much older,” he whispered.

The silence pressed in on him, Papa’s fear a tangible thing between them. It did no good now.

“How much older?”

Bleakly, “Just as much as you, I would imagine.”

Papa shook his head in denial.

“No.”

Neverland was a place for orphans, something he’d been reminded of with every macabre game, and every night in his dreams. Papa’s hand, letting go of his.

“Where do you think I was all that time?”

It was as though he’d struck him. Instantly contrite, Neal took his hand, his head bowed. Papa pulled him in, held him tightly, as though he would never let him go.

“My boy,” he gasped, the words a broken sob. “My beautiful boy.”

~

The floorboards in this house creaked. They were over a hundred years old, unless one considered that they’d never existed before the curse, and hadn’t aged a day since.

He heard Papa before he saw him, his knock tapping at the parlor’s doorframe a few moments later.

Papa had the knife.

Seeing that, in his father’s hand, he felt fourteen again, lost and afraid. He forgot that there was no magic here.

“I want you to take it,” Papa said. He held it out to him, and Neal forgot that he was able to breathe.

The last time he’d seen it, it had been dug into the earth, an anchor Papa clung to on the side of that pit. Papa’s hand, letting go of his, choosing it over him.

If there was no magic in this land, why was it even here?

“Destroy it, the way I know you always wanted to. I’ve found you, and I don’t need it anymore.”

The words had the sound of something rehearsed, like those in the shop.

“I chose it once; now I choose you.”

He did. He really did.

“You planned this” Neal said. He made no move to take it from him. “You planned to destroy the dagger. For how long?”

“From the moment I let you go.”

They said Papa was a coward. Neal had seen the word chip away at him from the time he’d been a small boy.

Hanging over that pit, Neal had called him that, for the very first time.

And the last.

It was an ugly thing, as ugly as the dagger in Papa’s hand.

He’d killed a woman who’d merely caught a glimpse of it, but had held it out to fourteen-year-old Baelfire as though it were also his, with no line where one of them ended and the other began.

They’d been in it together - until they weren’t.

Neal stuffed his hands in his back pockets. “I’m not touching that.”

Papa turned the dagger over in his hands, the cane propped against his hip.

“It has no power over me here.”

“Without magic. You have a backup, don’t you.”

Papa’s hands gave him away, if you knew what to look for. Papa talked as much with his gestures as anyone else did with words. The signs were smaller now, but no less real.

Guilty.

Neal sighed. “Do you know if the dagger _can_ be destroyed?”

Surprised and bewildered by his easy acceptance, Papa said, “I don’t.”

“Hey.” Neal clasped his shoulder. “You got your memories back _today_ , all right?”

It was so bizarre to see Papa looking _up_ at him. 

“But think about something,” Neal said. “As long as there is no magic, that dagger cannot control you. Can’t. You don’t ever have to worry about it, ever again.”

~

Neal learned his way around the town, kept out of sight of the mayor - and at Papa’s plea, the Mother Superior.

The Blue fairy. Papa thought she’d tricked them with the bean, and doubted she’d lost her memories as the other residents had.

It made his progress slower. Fortunately, the Mother Superior spent much of her time at the convent on the outskirts, or the hospital.

The evenings were a crash course in the recent history of the land they’d come from, particularly the events surrounding Emma’s family.

There was a spinning wheel gathering dust in Papa’s attic. Not just any spinning wheel - the very same one that Papa had used at home, before and after everything went to hell. There was no bench; Neal located one in the back room of Papa’s shop, smooth from wear and just the right height.

Papa’s routine changed, ostensibly due to legal correspondence with various adoption agencies. Neal made a trip outside the town to purchase a laptop, along with a plug-in antenna accessory to connect it to the cellular network.

Then he made another trip, because Papa wanted him to make airline reservations, and had his hands full already. It was all very transparent. Papa didn’t want them to be learning two different computers, either; they had to be identical.

Everything else in Storybrooke remained the same.

It wasn’t that time stood still here, but that the residents were not aware of its passing. Mrs. Lucas and Ruby repeated the same argument every morning outside the diner, Dr. Hopper crossed Main Street with Pongo at 8:32, and August’s father fixed the same sign above the five and dime, over and over again.

But Neal wasn’t there for any of that, because at 8:34, Papa would bid a cordial hello to the mayor as he made his way to the shop.

It was predictable, quiet, boring.

The only person who did not repeat her days was the mayor, and what she did change was not much - there was no point.

Papa had spun twine when they’d had no coin for more profitable materials. Neal found pre-carded wool online, finer than anything he’d ever held as a child. How it got from there to here was anyone’s guess, but one afternoon a package appeared on Papa’s doorstep, stuffed with roving.

After supper that night, Neal brought the wheel downstairs, set it before the hearth in the parlor, its right side to the fire. It was chilly outside, and the fireplace glowed with heat.

Papa watched him, papers spread over the coffee table, their print so small as to blend into illegible blocks of text.

Neal moved the bench into place and brought him the contents of the mailing package, russet brown wrapped in clear plastic.

“Got you something,” he said, perching on the edge of a chair. “Didn’t find any laying around, so….”

Billowy fiber spilled from the bag; Papa’s hand buried in its depths. He didn’t speak.

“This used to help, when you were upset,” Neal said. “Even when we… you didn’t have to, anymore.”

Papa swallowed, a bit of brown twisting between his fingers.

Aw hells, he’d made him cry.

~

Neal didn’t know how Papa did it, but Emma was released within the week. He left the bug in Boston and flew to meet her outside the courthouse, dread coiling in his stomach, brand-new identity emblazoned on shiny plastic weighing heavy in his pocket: Neal Gold, 79 Auspin Street, Storybrooke, Maine.

A door opened, and Emma stepped out, wary, as if someone might jostle her and wake her at any moment. She was wearing the same clothing he’d last seen her in, a bit rumpled, and there were dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept.

Emma could sleep anywhere, so long as it was warm and safe.

There was a bus stop on the corner; she drifted in its direction, stood staring sightlessly at the map posted there.

“Hey.”

For the briefest second, her face lit up.

Then she stopped, faltered. He’d never seen her so unsure. She was going to hate him, if she didn’t already.

“Neal?”

He’d hurt her.

She’d loved him, and he’d let her go. He was the luckiest damn fool to ever live, and the lowest.

Bewildered disbelief faded, replaced by betrayal.

“You left me.”

“I know,” Neal said. He stepped closer, ducked his head. He might have clean papers now, but people who worked around here were far more likely to have seen his picture, and recently.

He kept his hood up.

Emma could call the cops down on him with a shout. He didn’t deserve the time she was giving him now, and it wouldn't last long.

“I met a friend of yours, when I went-” he lowered his voice “-to sell the watches. I trusted him, and I shouldn’t have.”

Her eyes narrowed. He knew she hadn’t kept up with anyone; she’d never been in one place long enough for that kind of connection.

“Who?” She was already scanning the area, the courthouse doors, the security posted right outside.

“August? Yeah, see, he said you wouldn’t remember him.”

Even without a price on her head, Emma didn’t trust cops further than she could throw them.

“How convenient,” she said. “Why are you here?”

To beg her forgiveness, to make amends as best he could, and if he was far more fortunate than he deserved - to make her his.

But first-

“This is yours,” he said, a thick manilla envelope passing from his hands to hers.

She peeked inside.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Yeah. And this.” He held up a key, pressed it into her palm. “It’s got a clean VIN number and everything. It’s in Boston, ‘cause I had to leave it to get here, but-”

“You came back for me.” It was flat, guarded. Emma had to make sure before she allowed herself to hope. Her swan glinted in their hands; she studied it, refused to look at him.

She thought he’d abandoned her. He _had_ abandoned her, like everyone else.

“I am so sorry, Emma.”

Fumbling with her purse, she slowly tucked the money away. The swan stayed wrapped tight in her fist, its small white tag neatly labelled with the location he’d left their car. She hugged the old red bag to her, tested the bulk of the parcel inside.

“Hey.”

He touched her cheek, and found the reason she would not look at him. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

He’d done that to her.

She let him kiss her, a brush across her unresponsive lips, up between her eyebrows. Neither of them breathed.

“Did you come back for me?” The question was gravelly, without inflection.

His nose pressed into her forehead.

“I don’t deserve you, Emma.”

“But - you came back.”

Her arms slid around his waist, under his jacket, and she tipped her face up to his. The bag was in the way; she kept it between them.

Her thumb slipped under the waistband of his jeans, rubbed along his spine.

He groaned, and captured her mouth with his, hungry, pulled her closer. She was slower, deliberate, and tilted her head to fit them deeper.

That hand was all the way inside his jeans, his butt in her spread fingers. There was no room to spare; her wrist stretched the denim tight. A squeeze of his butt, and he yelped into her mouth.

“Emma, gods. Stop, please.”

Her dimples were deep puckers in her cheeks, her lips swollen. Her teeth flashed white and perfect.

“You owe me a drink, buddy.”

~

“I found your parents.”

Wide eyes, hazel green behind those bold black frames. He’d found a quiet corner in a coffee shop with a pair of wide upholstered chairs, but Emma had laughed at him and claimed her spot in his lap, curled against his chest.

It made thinking difficult.

“You what?”

“I mean… I found the town. They don’t know yet.” Because they were still cursed. “I didn’t tell them.”

They didn’t remember they had a daughter. Mary Margaret was a schoolteacher, ‘Charming’ a coma patient in the hospital.

“I found my father, too.”

She frowned. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with him.”

“I didn’t.” Neal shrugged. “He’s the one who got them to drop the charges.”

“You went looking for him - for me?”

“For me,” he said softly. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Emma. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life apart from you.”

Emma straightened and peered down at him, her hot cocoa clutched in one hand.

“The rest of your life.”

Sheepishly he amended, “If you’ll let me.”

She wouldn’t let him hide behind his coffee cup; she took it from him, set it on a table with hers.

Her expression was stuck somewhere between amusement and hope, exasperation and fear.

“Is that any way to ask a girl, Mister Cassidy?”

“I… I can’t.”

Her face fell.

“Not because I don’t want to,” he said hastily. “I do! But because there’s stuff I gotta tell you, and when I’m done, you’re gonna think I’m insane.”

She folded her arms, rested them on his chest, studied him. At last she said,

“I already think you’re insane.”

Emma had an uncanny sense for when someone was lying. If he didn’t know there was no magic in this land, he’d attribute it to that. It was dead useful, and might save their asses, just now.

“Okay,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her waist. “Turn that lie detector of yours up high.”

An eyebrow arched expectantly.

Oh, this could be _fun_. If there wasn’t so much at stake.

“I… turn into a frog every night.”

“Neal,” she groaned, and knocked her head into his, lightly.

He chuckled, and tried again.

“Your parents are Snow White and Prince Charming.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open. She closed it, swallowed. “You believe that. You really...” she trailed off, staring.

“His name’s ‘David,’ actually,” Neal continued gently. “Or ‘James,’ if he’s still pretending to be his twin brother.”

Relentlessly, “‘John Doe’ at the moment. He’s in a coma.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Didn’t say it was. The town is cursed. He’s been in that coma for the last seventeen years, six months-” he did a bit of mental math “-and twelve days.”

Emma’s age. She’d been a tiny newborn when August ‘found’ her by the side of the road. Some friend he turned out to be.

The significance of the date didn’t escape Emma. Her skeptical frown was layered with something else:

Sadness, grief, and betrayal.

For him, by him. The tale he wove was so far fetched as to remove him from her.

He attempted to reassure her.

“Emma, you haven’t lost me. I’m right here, with you. And if you’ll have me, I swear to you - I will never, ever leave you again.”

She looked down at her arms. “Believing something doesn't make it true.”

That’s exactly what made it true.

“Am I crazy?” he asked her, softly. “Concerning anything else. Anything but the curse.”

Her mouth quirked. “I thought you were gone for good, but you came back. That… that’s crazy.”

He touched her cheek, reverently. “That’s not crazy. That’s the best choice I ever made.”

Her dimples made another appearance, barely-there but definite, her cautious smile warming her eyes. 

“So what do you want, Neal? Because belief is harmless enough, so long as it stays inside your head.”

He needed her in Storybrooke, needed her to break the curse, needed her to be happy, needed-

“My papa wants to meet you, to start.”

“Hmm. Where?”

“Maine.”

Emma sat up. “ _Maine_?” she squeaked.

Neal shrugged, grinned. “He’s footing the bill. Ever been on a plane?”

~

No, no she hadn’t. Neal had left the bug in Boston, anyway. Two hours on the ground and five in the air meant a lot of time to talk. Emma dozed for much of the flight, her head pillowed on his shoulder, but she woke with a crick in her neck and was loath to nod off again and make it worse.

He waited until she was good and bored to say,

“Your parents didn’t dump you on the side of a freeway, you know.”

“What?”

“That’s just where you came through. “They sent you through a wardrobe-”

“Like Narnia?”

“Umm-”

“You know, the BBC movie?”

He didn’t. It wasn’t the first time he’d drawn a blank over things people here expected everyone to know.

“I don’t,” he said. “Sorry.”

“A wardrobe?”

“When you went through the wardrobe you appeared by the road. Your parents were trying to save you from the curse.”

Bleakly, “Sure they were.”

“That friend of yours, he told me where the town was, because he thought it was the last place I’d want to go. He was warning me off of you. He said I was keeping you from your parents.”

Neal fiddled with the cuff on his jacket, snapping and unsnapping its little strap. It was starting to fray.

“I didn’t want to do that to you,” he said.

She rescued the strap from him. “He doesn’t sound like much of a friend, if he called the cops on me.”

Neal nodded. “I screwed up, Emma.”

 _Hell yeah you did_ , was the look she gave him, but she was kind enough not to say it. She let him keep her hand.

He committed the shape of her fingers to memory.

“It’s true, that you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it. From the moment I left you, all I wanted was to find you again.”

Her knee knocked against his.

“So what’s the deal with you and your dad?”

He tucked her arm under his, her hand to his chest.

“When I was fourteen, my father and I... were separated. He created the curse that brought your parents, and most of the population of the Enchanted Forest, here. So he could find me. No one in that town but the caster and my papa even remember who they are. They’re stuck, repeating their lives, day after day, until the curse is broken.”

Skeptical, Emma tried to poke holes in his story.

“Then why doesn’t everybody just leave?”

“Papa said they couldn’t. He couldn’t come here. If they try, bad things happen, but it never occurs to them in the first place.”

“What bad things?”

He didn’t know.

“You know… bad things. Papa didn’t say.”

“Uh huh... so your father sent a bunch of fairy tale characters here.”

“Ee-yup.” Neal drew out the word.

“Frozen in time, stuck in Storybrooke, Maine. That’s what you’re going with?”

He laughed. “It’s true!”

She groaned.

“Emma,” he said more seriously. “I know you don’t believe me, but if you ever-” he didn't want to sound presumptuous by saying ‘when’ “-or decide you just don’t care that I’m obviously nuts - then I will do everything in my power to make you the happiest woman on earth, if you’ll let me.”

~

It was late by the time they made it into town, even with the Pacific time change.

“Papa’s at the house. I told him we’d meet him there.”

The bug seemed out of place on this street of enormous houses and ritzy cars - not a one of the latter newer than seventeen years, but in pristine condition, as though they’d been purchased in the last few months.

“It’s pink,” Emma said.

Neal laughed. “Pink wasn’t associated with women then. I’ll get our stuff later. Come on.”

There were lights on in the ground floor of the house, flooding out of every window. Too often Papa left them off, but not tonight.

Neal would have clattered up the stairs if not for Emma’s trepidation. Something was cooking, and it made his stomach growl. He’d been so eager to get here that they had hardly stopped on the way.

Emma noticed too, for her head lifted. “That smells good.”

“It smells like home,” Neal said. It smelled familiar, something he couldn’t quite place.

The upturn at the corners of her mouth was small, cautious. He slipped his arm around her waist.

Papa met them at the door, a smile lighting up his eyes. “Miss Swan?”

“Emma,” she countered, holding out her hand.

The simple gesture threw Papa for a loop. He faltered, then took her hand in his. 

Formally, “Be welcome in my home, Emma.”

She swallowed, and Neal held her closer. “What do I call you?”

Papa frowned, perplexed. “I go by ‘Mr. Gold’ here, but not to you, dear.”

“Here?”

“In the land without magic,” he said, watching her closely, “but this is not a conversation to be having outside. Did you eat?”

Papa was always asking him that now. Neglect breakfast for _one day_ , and this happened.

“We kind of… forgot,” she said, following Neal and his father.

The dining table had been piled with papers last Neal had seen it; Emma stopped short in the archway, her eyes big and round.

“For me?” Her whisper was tiny.

Papa’s head ducked. “For my family,” he said. “Bae, would you get the tureen from the oven, please?”

Neal nudged her head with his. In the kitchen, he couldn’t resist peeking under the lid. It was a good thing he had, or he might have dropped it on the way.

His heart hammered in his throat. It was a dish their village had only made on one day of the year, the one that celebrated the bonds of hearth and home, sometimes with a few close friends. It had always been just him and Papa.

Emma had no way of knowing.

“No one calls me that here,” Papa was saying, as Neal carried it to the table. “‘Adam,’ perhaps.”

“It doesn’t fit.”

Papa exchanged a glance with him, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“No, I suppose not.”

Emma’s skepticism came to the fore.

“You’re in on it too,” she said, but he only raised an eyebrow.

“What is your real name?” she asked, accepting her bowl back from him.

He smiled. “Rumplestiltskin.”

Emma rolled her eyes.

“I’m not calling you that.”

His mouth quirked. “It would attract some attention, wouldn’t it?”

~

There was an inn on Main Street, but Papa wouldn’t hear of it. There were spare rooms here aplenty. They weren’t even dusty.

No way did Neal want his father to know that he and Emma had long passed the separate bed stage, on the rare occasion they’d had the luxury of a bed. It was _not_ a conversation he looked forward to.

It was nearly midnight when they all turned in.

~

Papa had the good coffee, and the smell woke Neal the next morning.

“Hey.”

Papa, perfectly put together at this hour, smiled. He passed Neal the cream from the refrigerator and left him alone.

Emma wasn’t far behind. She had red marks on her forehead in a waffle pattern - from a blanket? Neal ran his finger over them.

“Good morning.”

“Missed you,” she whispered. She considered him for a moment, then leaned up and kissed him.

Warmth filled them, flooded them and overflowed. It rippled out and spread, bright sparks behind their eyes, a caressing flash like summer rain - there and gone again, wispy tendrils of steaming magic curled in its place, everything more vivid than before, sharper-edged and clean.

Papa’s mug dropped to the ground, shattered upon the tile.

“Wow.” Neal knew he had the most ridiculous goofy grin.

Emma glanced between them. “What the hell was that?”

~

It started with the pounding of a meaty fist upon the door.

Neal, closest to the noise, answered.

An older, heavy-set man stood there, red in the face. There was a perplexed pause, and then his gaze slid over Neal’s shoulder to land on Papa.

“Where the hell is my daughter?” he demanded.

“Who-” Neal turned to Papa.

The question died before it could finish forming. Papa had stiffened, his hand gripping the cane like a weapon. Neal’s stomach plummeted; Papa knew exactly who this man was, and he hated him.

A thread snapped.

He lunged. The man stumbled back, but Neal was between them, Papa’s snarls burning his ears. Neal caught him.

“Be right with you,” Emma chirped, and shut the door in the belligerent man’s face.

Papa was trying to fight his way to the door; there were words amidst the snarls: “Gone,” and “not coming back,” and “HIS fault.”

Neal steered him into the parlor, into the chair he favored.

Papa seemed to come back to himself, as though he hadn’t known where he was. Neal crouched in front of him, ready to catch him if he decided to go for the door again, but-

“She’s gone,” Papa told him, tears streaming down his cheeks. “She’s gone, forever, and she’s not coming back. It’s HIS fault.”

Neal exchanged a glance with Emma, her arms folded over herself in worry.

“Not mine,” Papa insisted. It was a hoarse croak, the accent as thick as Neal had ever known it before. “He was her father. His. It’s his.”

They weren’t going to get any sense out of Papa for some time; Emma’s hand rested on Neal’s shoulder.

“I’ll go.”

“Okay, holler-”

She brushed over the back of his head. “If he makes trouble, sure.”

Papa’s eyes followed her, muscles bunched like he might leap up and confront their visitor again.

“Don’t make me sit on you,” Neal grumbled. He could, now. Papa had no magic here, and there would be no murder today, no snails squished underfoot.

The front door opened and closed.

Papa had kept their long-ago deal, many years late, but he had.

Muffled voices filtered in.

Slowly, the tension drained away. Papa studied the head of his cane, his thumbnail digging between the detail, sliding back and forth.

They could still hear Emma and the man outside, but the unintelligible words no longer carried the angry pitch of before.

“I promised her that he would live. It was part of our deal. I couldn’t even... I would have killed him, if I’d gone near him.”

Neal’s calves were starting to ache; he brought the bench from Papa’s wheel, straddled it, and asked,

“Can you tell me her name?”

Papa’s hands wrapped over the cane’s head, unwrapped, and rewrapped again. Neal took one of them, held it in his.

There was a painful swallow, a tensing of fingers.

“Belle,” he whispered.

Seriously?

Because of course it was.

Neal was observant enough to recognize that the folklore here mirrored events back home, but he’d never suspected that his own father would be part of it. He should have.

“So what happened?”

Brown eyes rimmed in red glanced up, then away.

“I lost her,” he said, as if the words themselves haunted him. “That’s really all there is to it.”

It wasn’t.

Emma was the other half of Neal, and when he’d left her it had been as though he had ripped her away from himself, leaving a raw, bleeding stump behind like that of a missing limb, if a missing limb could consist of so large a portion of one’s self.

He squeezed Papa’s hand to bring him back. “Don’t shut me out, please?”

The cane set against the chair, Papa reached up to cup Neal’s jaw, the back of his head, and pressed their foreheads together.

Words came barely above a murmur, but so close, they did not need more volume than this.

“She... kissed me, and my curse started to break. I _needed_ my power in order to find you, Bae. So I sent her away.”

“For me?”

“I swore that I would love nothing else until I found you.”

“She loved you enough to break your curse. You _know_ what that means.”

“I do. Now. I didn’t believe it possible then.”

 _Why not_? He didn't say it, but Papa knew.

In the smallest of whispers, “I didn’t think anyone could.”

With a sinking feeling, Neal wondered if he hadn’t left Papa just as much as he’d been left. What would have happened if Neal hadn’t taken him off guard like that?

“Papa.” He pulled back to look him square in the eye. “I. love. you.”

Papa jerked as if he’d burnt him, but Neal hung on to his hand.

“I never stopped loving you. I was angry, and hurt. But I never stopped loving you. And I won’t.”

~

Papa had gone and fallen in love, and now the woman was dead. Her own father, the man standing out on the porch, had driven her to suicide.

But if the curse was lifted, why didn’t Sir Maurice remember?

The muffled voices halted. The door creaked, then shut again.

“Okay. So. That’s quite a tale,” Emma said, rejoining them. “I got his number. He’s looking for his daughter.” She gestured. “Yea high, brown hair, blue eyes. Says you stole her?”

Papa’s eyes were impossibly wide. “He’s _looking_ for her?”

“Well, yeah,” Emma said. “That’s why he was here.”

Papa dropped his hand and bolted for the door.

This time Neal let him.

~

The man didn’t know anything, but no, he hadn’t seen Belle since she’d gone with Papa. Papa’s face was still wet, his eyes red, and he appeared completely and utterly lost.

 _I would have killed him, if I’d gone near him_.

Belle was alive.

“But why did you think she wasn’t?” Emma asked.

Papa’s expression hardened. “Regina.”

~

They heard the mob before they saw it, loud and raucous and overflowing into the street in front of the mayor’s mansion.

“You can’t go anywhere near that,” Neal said.

Papa didn’t let up on the accelerator one bit. “She knows where Belle is.”

“Papa, stop. We go into that mess, and those people are gonna eat you alive. We’ll find another way, please.”

Just over the heads of the crowd, they could see a woman with dark hair and a man, a blue hospital gown showing under the collar of his jacket. They were standing on the porch in front of the door, holding the press of people at bay.

Neal recognized the schoolteacher, although he’d never seen the man.

“Emma, I think those are your parents,” he said, pointing.

But Emma shrank back, reluctant to approach the scene.

“Let’s just find you dad's girlfriend, okay?”

~

Another way was a side entrance to City Hall that was used by municipal staff. Papa had the lock open within moments, and Emma gave Neal a wry smile.

“I can see where you got it from.”

Toward the front of the building the shouting grew more audible. Papa ignored it and headed straight for the mayor’s office. This door was unlocked, and they promptly spread out, Emma flicking through filing cabinets, Papa sifting through the papers on the desk.

Neal pulled open its drawers, stopping to pick the lock on one. There was a wooden box inside, its carved surface out of place in this asture setting.

He opened it and yelped, nearly dropping it. A heart, pulsing red, lay inside.

Papa grinned.

“Ah - we can deprive her of at least one of her allies. She’ll have a good many hearts hidden away somewhere. If we can return them to their owners, we might weaken her.”

“How the hell do these work without magic?” Neal asked, as Emma came over. Did the dagger work? He’d merely taken Papa’s word that it didn’t.

A shake of the head. “I should like to know. There’s only one way to see if they do. May I?”

But Neal wasn’t about to hand a person’s heart over to his father, no matter how amicable their relationship might be at the moment. He wasn’t a boy anymore.

“Do you need magic to give them back?”

“Normally no,” Papa admitted. “Bae, please. This person might know something,”

“All the more reason to want them on our side,” Neal argued.

“I need to find Belle. She could be in danger with every moment that passes.”

Papa was right, but-

“Let's do it without making more enemies for you, okay? How do we find who this belongs to?”

Papa’s hands flexed around the cane unhappily. “Pick it up and tell the heart’s owner to come to this office.”

Emma started. “You can _talk_ through those things?”

“Let’s hope we can return them as well,” Neal replied. “You can control people through their hearts.” The idea of being stuck with his heart permanently outside his body made his skin crawl.

The Dark One had little sense for which actions his son would find repulsive; Papa knew.

“A heart in itself is neither good nor evil, Bae. _Ask_ the heart’s owner, if you wish. They will still hear you.”

The heart was warm, like the living organ it represented. He handled it carefully, the beats contracting over and over again, faster, as though he held a frightened bird.

It wasn’t long before a man slipped through the door, wary. 

Neal recognised him, and his uniform - the sheriff he’d been avoiding. He shoved aside the implications of a cop being under the control of that woman and approached him, the heart cradled in both hands.

The flicker of veiled fear matched its pulse; Graham caught sight of the heart and paled.

Neal swallowed. “Papa?”

He heard the tapping of Papa’s cane, his uneven footsteps.

“It wants to go in, Son. It’s removing it that is the difficult part.”

All right then.

The heart tipped inside Graham, racing wildly. Graham bent over gasping. There were tears in his eyes when he straightened, his hand over the place it had gone in.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I don’t even know how long it’s been. I can feel again. Who are you? Who were you?”

Papa didn’t answer that, but asked, “We’re looking for a woman named Belle. Do you know anything?”

Graham’s eyes lit up. “Regina kept her prisoner. _You’re_ Rumplestiltskin, aren’t you? She said she needed to get back to Rumplestiltskin.”

“Where is she?”

Graham opened his mouth, closed it. Frowned. “I’ve never seen her here.”

Papa strode to the exit before Neal could think to stop him. He caught up to him down the street, and Papa plowed right into the crowd, one single destination in mind.

Charming stopped mid-speech.

“Rumplestiltskin?”

And… there went Papa’s anonymity. His furious gaze zeroed in on the mayor - the Evil Queen.

“Inside, _Your Majesty_.”

Strangely enough, the mayor obeyed.

Charming resembled a stunned ox. Snow White recovered faster.

“Emma?”

Reluctantly, Emma nodded. She exchanged a glance with Neal, jerked her head at the door.

Neal slipped around them, shut the door behind him.

Papa _boiled_ with anger, seethed with rage. Neal could almost feel the magic, even though there was none here.

This land had no magic of its own. Magic could enter, could be carried in an object, or a person. There was more than one type of magic, and the opulent entryway was crackling with it.

At that moment, Papa seemed more dangerous than Neal had ever seen him, even as the Dark One.

“Now _please_... tell me where my Belle is.”

For a moment the mayor appeared stricken, and then she smiled.

“Well, how ‘bout that.”

Behind her, a figure eased into the room, silent feet concealing his arrival. Neal didn’t look, lest the flicker of his eyes give their ally away.

“Your ‘pleases’ from that deal never did you much good, did they?”

Past and present clashed, jarred buried memory.

“They generally don’t,” Graham said quietly.

A deer in the headlights, the mayor froze.

“‘Pleases,’ that is.”

What did Graham know about it? Too much, from the hunted way the mayor’s eyes darted to the door behind Neal.

_Please, Milah - It’s time to go._

_Good. So go._

_Please don’t speak to my boy like that._

_It’s treason to avoid service. Take the boy now._

_Please, Papa - don’t._

Graham’s eyes met Papa’s over the mayor’s shoulder, Papa’s stiffened posture brittle as winter frost. Another silent step, and his hand crept over her throat from behind, held her at arm’s length.

“I never did take my time over a kill, but then I’d never been prey. Before I met you. I’d never been in a place where ‘pleases’ were all I had.”

Papa’s shoulders loosened, and Neal moved to his side. They needed this woman alive if they were going to find Belle. Graham’s hand caressed the mayor’s pale throat, found her jumping pulse with his fingers, its beat visible from where Neal stood.

“Did you know that a frightened rabbit’s heart can burst before it ever has to suffer? Not humans, normally. Wolves don’t kill for pleasure, Your Majesty. They kill for food, and to protect their families.”

“So get on with it.”

“No.

“You see, you were right; I was a wolf. You made me a pet.”

For the first time, Graham’s soft cadence acquired bite. His hand tightened.

“And pets… kill for fun. For entertainment. Because they are caged. That princess you wanted dead is out there attempting to keep the mob from your literal doorstep. It would be a shame if someone were to sabotage her efforts, wouldn’t it?”

Papa agreed. “Execution is such a… civil way to end a person.”

The mayor’s lip curled with bravado. “They didn’t have the stomach for it before.”

“But - your adoring public does,” Papa said. “Not the patience, though. Things could get... messy.”

~

So much for that. Neal had been preparing himself for something truly horrifying.

Papa shooed the mayor back out the door, handing her off to Emma and Snow. He was in a hurry.

“And _please_ don’t even think of warning anyone.”

~

They didn’t need to read the plaques to find the correct door. There was someone scrabbling on the other side, _thump-thump_ ing on the metal.

“Belle?”

She dodged as the door opened inward, lost her balance and fell.

Papa crumpled to the ground next to her, gathered her into his arms. She shivered and crowded closer to him.

“I remember,” she gasped into his shoulder. “I remember everything. I love you!”

The worry Papa had been carrying petered away into nothing. Nearly nothing. Papa was always worrying about something.

“And I love you.”

~

Neal chose to wait out in the corridor. He’d have gone to find Emma, but this place gave him the creeps.

He didn’t have to wait long; Papa wanted Belle to meet him.

“This is my son, Baelfire.”

Neal couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he went by ‘Neal’ these days.

“He’s the reason I couldn’t… I had to… forgive me, Belle. I had to find him.”

There was more kissing. Neal could have lived without seeing that.

~

He caught up to Emma by the clock tower.

“I think I believe you now,” she said.

He grinned. “Does that mean I can ask you?”

She considered him, the same way she had before she’d kissed him that morning.

“Hmm. Yes, you can ask me.”

~


End file.
